Green Day Interview

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The band on the experience of getting their own game.

By John Gaudiosi

In addition to having their own Tony Award-nominated musical, American Idiot, on Broadway, Green Day is getting the full-on, standalone rock star treatment from MTV Games and Harmonix with Green Day: Rock Band. Band members Tre Cool, Mike Dirnt, and Billie Joe Armstrong were recently at MTV's headquarters to check out the new game, which ships on June 8. Green Day is only the second band to get its own game in the Rock Band franchise; the first was last September's title featuring a little band from Liverpool, England.

"Who are the Beatles?" jokes Dirnt, when asked what it was like to follow in the videogame footsteps of the world's most famous rock band.

Dirnt and his bandmates grew up playing games and watched as the music industry and videogame industry started to capitalize on each others' talent in the early '90s.

"I think one of the first times I recognized there was good music in videogames was in some of the early Tony Hawk editions," says Dirnt. "Those were really great. You could hear Dead Kennedys and different bands that I liked in a game that I enjoyed playing. I've yet to hear really good music in a game where I shoot people, but I'm working on that."

While there's no shooting in Green Day: Rock Band, gamers will be able to sing (including the three-part vocals that Harmonix introduced with The Beatles: Rock Band), jam on the drums and play bass and guitar. The game traces the history of the band from its earliest punk hits like Insomniac and Nimrod to the epic scope of their latest albums, including American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown.

All three band members worked closely with Harmonix to provide not only their likeness and voices, but the original music for the new game, working with the game developer to get the original recordings.

"A lot of those reel-to-reel tapes have to be re-mastered or re-mixed or whatever," says Dirnt. "You get one shot and you have to bake them because all the little magnetic particles that hold the sound and everything on there will fall off if you try and play them. We're lucky that none of those songs were lost forever."

Armstrong says that when the band recorded Doogie in 1993, they went on tour with Bad Religion right after that.

"We noticed that we were playing 'Chump' and 'Longview' back-to-back and we were playing it tighter as the tour went on," says Armstrong. "So we went back to record those songs in Los Angeles. Trying to find those tapes was difficult because they'd been misplaced somewhere."

However, thanks to the new game, there's a virtual history of the band that goes beyond just the music. And that's something that fans new and old can enjoy.

"I thought we could have a lot of fun with Rock Band and highlight different times in our career since we were going to try and use so many songs," says Dirnt. "It was a really cool way to show people different things."

"Seeing ourselves through the lens of this videogame has been mind-blowing," adds Armstrong.

While franchises like Rock Band and Guitar Hero have reinvented living room entertainment, Armstrong sees the potential for their reach to go even further.

"Rock Band is kinda more of an interactive karaoke machine," says Armstrong. "It's just something that's fun. You play these fake little guitars, and the fake drum set. You sing along to the vocals, and they sing along to the harmonies. It's just purely for fun." He speculates that eventually there will be Rock Band bars, which he can't wait to see.

"Our game is gonna open up a lot as far as creativity," adds Dirnt. "I think what's gonna happen in the future is there's gonna be even more crossover between bands and games."

The band members also see music games as a way to expose people to new material.

"I don't think every single person is going to know every single song," says Cool. "Well, there's definitely going to be people that know all the songs. But it's a good way to discover some of the older material."

And even the band has discovered new things about their music through this videogame collaboration.

"It's exciting for me to hear the song 'She' and hearing the stems that they had to do for it and all the different mixes for it to bring out the drums and the guitar and bass and vocals," says Armstrong.